For me, !superbowl@lemmy.world is basically the only active community that I really love on Lemmy and the main reason why I keep coming back here. Other places can be fun too, but Superbowl is just different. There are so many funny owl pictures in them as well as so many informative posts (mainly the Owl-natomy Posts). Also, it is a very positive place. I highly recommend checking it out!

Glad you liked it!

About the ecology, I can’t point to anything particular that makes them thrive now. Something interesting that I left out of the post which I read in the article that wasn’t available online, was that the owls eat different food in the Netherlands than in Germany. In Germany there are a lot of rodents, but in the Netherlands the rodents populations are smaller because of very intensive agriculture. Because of this, the Dutch owls eat more other species (they unfortunately did not specify what those species were).

One trend that is visible in nature in Western Europe is that smaller fauna are struggling, but larger species are doing really well. In the Netherlands we have seen reintroductions of not only the Eagle Owl, but also the white-tailed Eagle, the beaver, the otter and the wolf (and maybe the lynx too in the near future). On top of that we have seen big population increases of cranes, geese, deer and probably some more that I don’t know about. This is mostly because of conservation efforts and hunting being banned.

And I didn’t know that about the Kattenstoet, sounds very interesting!

I have no English sources for you, but with some translation app you can probably still check them out. One article that I used is not available online unfortunately.

The Owl Camera(they have other owls and other birds too, as well as some interesting articles. The site is only in Dutch unfortunately).

[Article by NOS](Oehoe bezig aan opmars: ‘Mogelijk al boven de honderd’ - https://nos.nl/l/2519607), the public broadcasting service. From this article is the ringing video that I talked about in the post.

This German Site which has some numbers about the Eurasian Eagle Owl in Germany. They also have This article that talks about how the Eurasian Eagle Owl was perceived in the past in Germany. It is really interesting, so definitely check it out! They have some more articles that are very interesting too.

Also some random linguistic facts: The Eurasian Eagle Owl is called Oehoe in Dutch and Uhu in German; both pronounced as “oo-hoo”. This is the only Dutch owl name that doesn’t end in owl; it is also an onomatopeia.

In this NYT article they say that 55 percent of NYC households have no car, and this site claims a modal share of 30% for cars. So most NYC residents already use sustainable transportation, but not all of them.

It was probably Hans Niemann then

I should really start listening to audiobooks more often. I just looked and the book is freely available on Librivox, so I may switch back and forth between reading and listening from now on. Thanks for the tip!

Reading “A tale of two cities” by Charles Dickens. I am not too far into it, but so far it’s been really enjoyable! The English accents are really hard to follow for someone whose native language isn’t English, but I’m getting used to it.

I recently read this and was surprised at how good it was. I loved Orwells Animal Farm, but didn’t like 1984 that much, so I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it; I read it more to get some insights of the war. But the book is not just informative, it is also really funny at times, and the story is just wild.

I second this recommendation.

Homage to Catalonia, George Orwells memoir about the Spanish civil war. I never read memoirs or autobiographies, but I am very glad I have read this one. It gives a good insight into various aspects of the civil war, as well as Orwells personal views (and his sigarette addiction). On top of that, it is at times hilarious. And it is almost unbelievable how many things happened in just 6 months.

Highly recommend it if you’re into history or politics or love Orwells other works.

!biodiversity@mander.xyz may be a good place, especially if you have some information on its impact on biodiversity. It’s not a community dedicated to depressing news, but anything that has to do with science goes on Mander.xyz, even when it’s sad.

I myself would be interested in articles you have to share, I never heard of this before!

In my experience (Dutchie living near the German border) the car culture of Germany isn’t that big; it is mostly the industry. Yes, there are many cars and a few more people driving in big BMW than the Dutch average, but there are quite a few people on bikes too. Also, transit in Germany is quite decent, despite the governments efforts; and, contrary to the Netherlands, it is affordable. Meanwhile the UK cancelled part of their HSR system and the prime minister claims it is a “country of motorists”.

Deutsche Bank I don’t know about, so you may still be right.

If you haven’t already, check out the Owl-natomy posts! They are a great way to learn a lot about the general anatomy of owls; I at least learned a lot from those posts.

If you have objectively proven that atheists are wrong, that means that you must have proven that God exists right? I do not think that is possible without God showing himself, and not just to you, but to others too. If these atheists have not seen God, you have in fact, not proven that they are objectively wrong.

Also, there are many arguments that atheists use. For example, some atheists believe that the Bible can not be right because parts of it were written long after the events that they describe (for example gospels written maybe 50 years after Jesus’ death, meaning most if not all eyewitnesses have died).

As a Christian myself, I do not believe you can objectively disprove atheism. And to claim not liking God is the only reason for their beliefs is ignorant, if not worse.

One of Bob Dylans greatest achievement was understanding the importance of the Wiggle in music and he has incorporated it into many of his songs, most notably in his magnum opus, “Wiggle Wiggle” from 1990. Experts and scientists are still in disagreement as to whether or not the song “Wilbury Twist”, from a band Dylan was in, is the greatest song of all time, but they agree that, as James Joyce noted, “the Wiggle is strong in that one.”

Because of these songs Bob Dylan is the only songwriter in history to have been rewarded the Nobel prize for the literature. In his speech after receiving the prize Dylan could not stop talking about Moby Dick. Personally I think the genius that is Bob Dylan used Moby Dick as an inspiration for his music because the movement of the whale when swimming is a Wiggle: with this speech he once more showed the world that the Wiggle is what “keeps music moving forward”.

Ah, the whale! What a beautiful metaphor for music! Oh man! Admire and model thyself after the whale!

Did some re-reading of Anna Karenina and Pride and Prejudice. Now reading George Orwells “Homage to Catalonia”, his memoir of his time as a volunteer against the fascists in the Spanish civil war. I’m about a third of the way in and so far it has been quite enjoyable, but I am hoping for some more politics later on; right now it is mostly about the situation on the front.

This is so glorious! Thanks for posting!

Yeah it is definitely bittersweet, but if you compare it with the Children of Húrin, it is a very happy book. Boromirs death may be the saddest part of LOTR, but it would be the happiest part of The Children of Húrin, just because that whole book is so dark.

I am a big fan of Leo Tolstoy. His biggest works are War and Peace and Anna Karenina, but those are both quite large, so if you want to know a bit about his style i would suggest some of his shorter works. Of the shorter works I have read I really loved “The Death Of Ivan Ilyich”, “Hadji Murad” and “Master And Man”.

I also really like Jane Austen, you can’t really go wrong with her. Her novels aren’t that difficult either; they were the first novels in English (my second language) that I really enjoyed reading and they significantly improved my English.

I completely understand the weather thing. In the Netherlands it doesn’t get that cold, but the rain is really annoying (it rained basically non-stop from october till late february). In the city where I live however, there is also a pretty good bus service, so you can avoid cycling longer distances in the rain. For me I find cycling in good weather so good for my mental and physical health that I wouldn’t want to go without it.

You say an e-bike doesn’t quite do it for you, and I’m curious what you mean. Is it that it doesn’t have the range, that the engine isn’t strong enough for hills, or something else? I would love to learn about more disadvantages of micromobility, so I can create more nuanced opinions.

It is getting a lot better, but traditionally chess was a game for men only. Until the 2000s women were seen as inferior by most top players, like Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov (AKA Gary Chess, inventor of chess). Right now 95 percent of members of the Dutch chess federation is men. In my local chess club the average ratio men/women is provably like 90/10, with the difference between children being a lot less than adults.

If you haven’t seen it, the series “The Queens Gambit” does a pretty good job portraying the difference between men and women at the top of chess: maybe one woman, hundreds of men.

The gender gap is coming down, but it is still there.

Also, pro chess players only sacrifice their queens, but not their kings. I do both